Representation

Abstract

According to a realist semantics, scientific theories represent their referents. They constitute conceptual representations of actual or hypothetical bits of reality — or rather of some of their traits. The same holds for some of the predicates and some of the formulas of a scientific theory. Just for some: not all of them represent. Thus, while a distance function may represent the spacing of things, not every one of the infinitely many functions of a given distance function will represent something. Likewise not every line in a deduction within a scientific theory represents some aspect of a thing: some statements are purely mathematical. What makes some constructs representational and others not? This is, in a nutshell, the problem of the present chapter.